On Friday I mentioned a purported email from Steve Jobs to a user, upset about the new MacBook’s lack of a FireWire port, that downplayed the importance of FireWire with regards to consumer-level video editing. Jobso noted that most HD camcorders for sale over the past few years support USB 2.0.
I shrugged off the port’s demise, saying we’ll learn to live without it.
But you disagreed in a very prolific fashion, clogging the post with comments pointing out millions of bullet-list-worthy reasons why the MacBook needs FireWire and why you aren’t dropping a dime on those aluminum (a-lu-min-um) atrocities.
Here’s a quick roundup of the Good Points:
One of the best points, I think, was made by reader rickk, on my comparison between the removal of the FW port and Apple’s slaughtering of the floppy disk:
no one had $2000 invested in floppy disks like i have invested in firewire hard ware
And so, the debate rages. The absence of the FireWire port hasn’t deterred the legions of buyers at my local Apple Store, nor has it discouraged my collegiate friends from gobbling ‘em up. But those who have noticed the port’s disappearance are looking to other options.
I’m just opting to spend more money and buy the MacBook Pro.
Well played, Apple. Well played.
Who would have thought that that tiny little port would make you all go out and spend another $700?
And then there's the music business: When it comes to audio, Firewire interfaces offers low latency that USB 2.0 can't match, hence all the best audio interfaces are Firewire only.
Yes, I could just buy a MBP, but it's the size of the MacBook I love. If Apple released a 13 inch MacBook Pro with Firewire, I would be one of the first to buy it.
If not, the lack of Firewire IS a deal breaker for me.
I had to talk ichat my friend through his upgrade today to a MacBook from a lampshade iMac that had not been upgraded past 10.3.9.
With no FW Target Mode, Migration Assistant needs to be on both computers.
Additionally, the brilliant Apple phone support told my friend that his MacBook didn't have USB 2 so it would not connect to his external HD.
Wow, I didn't realize until now that even the new MB Pros are missing FW400. I was thinking all this time it was just the non-Pros. Has anyone tried The FW800->FW400 adapter from Sonnet? For $15 it would at least turn a show-stopper into an inconvenience.
I don't need firewire. So what's the big deal? In fact, because of all the whining, maybe I should just buy 1000 Macbooks just to spite you guys.
Jeez. Get a grip. If it doesn't work for you, don't buy it. Apple will see it in the sales numbers.
No firewire = no dice.
Soon as I saw this, I got a brand new previous generation MBP, for much less than what they were going for just one week ago.
Apple really blew it this time.
As a teacher I am particularly hurt by this decision. We've heavily invested in Firewire camcorders and Firewire backup drives. The white Macbooks have provided us with capable little video editing machines for both teachers and students. We can only hope that the cheapest white Macbook sticks around for a while. If they go all aluminum, the next time my budget comes around or I get a grant I'll either have to sacrifice portability and get iMacs or get a smaller number of Macbook Pros. As long as the video cameras and hard drives work, we're not wasting resources to buy new ones. Unlike computers they are not quickly dated. I sincerely hope that Apple had a good reason for driving education customers into a difficult situation. My IT chief will certainly continue to push cheap Windows laptops with Firewire and Moviemaker. This does not help my case, Apple.
In the interest of fairness, USB can power hard drives, I'm running a time machine backup to one right now. USB can power all sorts of stuff, my M-Box is bus powered, and my iPhone is powered by USB too...
"target disk mode is da bomb when it comes to Mac-to-Mac file transfers. Being able to access and view the HD of a Mac from another Mac as if it were an external drive is immensely valuable for tech support, backups, recovery, simple file transfers, etc."
I'm sorry, obviously I am confused, but which of these can you *not* do via an Ethernet crossover cable? Without having to remember how to put a Mac into Target Disk mode? Or, indeed, having to buy a massively expensive Firewire cable?
How primitive are you people? And, more importantly, how badly are you treating your Macs?
DK
FW is dead in the consumer market.
GEt over it.
You can use Time Machine for migration assistant.
YOu can transfer files via Ethernet.
USB drives also are powered via just USB. btw, there aren't many drives powered by FW on the market. Hell there are many FW drives relative to USB drives.
FW800 has even less support than FW400 in the marketplace.
Consumer camcorders are all going to USB because they are all going flash memory instead of tape. No need for realtime transfers. NO need for the more expensive FW interface.
FW drives can all be repackaged in cheap USB external cases.
People with FW camcorders can stick with the poly MB. IT's still just as fast as the new ones and will last another year or two. They can also go MBP or refurb MBPs with 1-yr warranty from Apple.
The best tech doesn't always win in the marketplace. The good enough and cheaper tech does.
The smart whiners will sell their FW stuff now while they can.
All mighty Jobs says "You don't need firewire, you don't need card reader, you must pay $1000+, resistance is futile."
To add some empirical data to this discussion about the lack of FW, I compared using FW 400 vs USB to back up my MacBook's internal hard drive to an external hard drive.
Result: FW was about twice as fast.
Here are the details:
Using SuperDuper, I cloned the 50 GB of data on the internal hard drive of my first gen MacBook (bought Aug 06; 2 GHz Intel Core Duo w 1 G RAM) to an OWC Mercury On-the-Go Fire Wire 400 + USB 2.0 external hard drive (Oxford 911 chipset and a Western Digital Scorpio 160 GB hard drive with 2 MB buffer).
Time to transfer/make clone:
FW: 1 hour 38 minutes
USB: 3 hour 5 minutes
Not only was FW twice as fast, it did not require exiting any background processes (at least with my setup). Using USB, on the other hand, the backup stalled when I kept a background program turned on (Little Snitch network monitor). I had to disable the network monitor to be able to backup using USB.
At an hour and a half using FW for a complete backup, I can go to lunch, do some paperwork, then get back to work. Having the computer tied up for three hours for a backup with USB, though, is not possible within a workday.
Yes, one can later do "Smart backups" with SuperDuper that only backs up what is changed and thus are much faster (and I will next be comparing FW to USB using this), but about every fourth backup I like to do a complete erase and backup.
Apple might listen if enough people complain. When I called Apple, at first the person tried to steer me to the MacBook Pro. After I told him not only did I not want to spend an extra $700 or so for a MBP, I also wanted the smaller size of a MacBook. He then admitted these were valid concerns and went on to say that Apple does take feedback and that sometimes it makes a difference. I gave him the results of my comparison of cloning times, which he said he typed into some sort of internal feedback system at Apple. He also urged me to give feedback on the Apple website, which I did.
If anyone wants to try to influence Apple (not easy, I know) the address to write to Apple about this issue is:
www.apple.com/feedback/
then you look for MacBook
Again, another article that merely repeats Jobs line and fails to point out that he is only right when he wrote "most HD camcorders use USB" subject to careful interpretation of his words. HD as in "Hard Disk", maybe, but HD as in "High Definition", definitely not.
There are plenty of currently made high-def cameras (the excellent Canon HV30 beign a case in point) that become useless without Firewire. Sure, the HV30 has a USB port, but that is only for downloading photos or very low resolution video stored on the ram card. Jobs was either beign very careful in what he wrote, or he doesn't understand the current state of the video market. Take your pick.
Funny, but I seem to remember Apple crowing a couple of years ago about the importance of high definition. I don't disagree, but I do find it ironic that the future of high-def on MacBooks is limited to its past models.
Feedback left on Apple site ... thanks for the link.
This will go down as a terrible blunder by Steve Jobs to pick a chipset that is missing Firewire.
Deal Breaker for:
- Backups, I mean USB/TIme Capsule you have to be kidding
- Video importing, most cameras require Firewire (no idea where he does his shopping)
- Audio interfaces ... Firewire is simply the standard for the best performance
Seriously scratching my head on this one ... this is worse than the Mobileme fiasco (that is ongoing).
Removing the firewire from the macbook is a monumental mistake by apple, one I'm am certain will greatly damage sales. Apple has always been the computer of choice for those involved in the creative industries, music, film, media etc. Why then I ask would you choose to remove the one connection that all of theses people at the core of your market rely upon for any decent functionality-firewire. Audio interfaces, cameras, hard drives, and other peripherals all perform much faster and more reliably on firewire than USB. To suggest that USB2 even comes close to firewire in these areas is simply not true, and is supported by the fact that the higher quality peripherals in fact only support FIREWIRE!
I can only assume that the omission of firewire has been a move to force creative industry folk into buying the macbook pro! An additional $1000 to gain the advantage of a firewire port is just absurd!
In what appears to be an apparent acknowledgement of their oversite, apple have continued the previous white macbook as a legacy offering for the masses who use firewire. All good and well but the aluminium casing of the new macbook was in direct response I believe to the design fault of it's plastic predecessor, where the raised bevelled edges on the lid eventually crack the casing when closed. (I'm on my third case replacement in under 12 months!)
Let's stick to the winning apple tradition, and move forward not backward with design and funtionality!
That's 1 good reason and 3 lames ones.
1. Jason Snell (and DK) have already pointed out that Gigabit ethernet is faster (actually @DK, I don't think you need a crossover cable, the ports should do the crossover automatically).
2. USB provides power (all iPods are USB-powered). Yes, FireWire provides more, but USB provides enough.
3. That's a good point about the schools.
4. Yeah, and the high-end MacBook Pro has a faster processor. USB is fast enough. If you need lower latency, you need a Pro machine.
In short, except for 3, these are reasons why some people might opt not to get the MacBook (or to get the $999 one with FireWire), they are not reasons why the MacBook must have FireWire.
I'm very irritated by those who dismiss the whole thing by saying that whoever is disappointed by the lack of FW support is just a whiner (put here your favorite derogatory term).
From a technical point of view there is no doubt that FW is superior to USB and cannot be replaced by the latter for some applications. From a commercial point of view, phasing out FW may prove itself a sound move or not; in any case it's just the nth example of "bad money driving out good".
In this situation I believe that those who don't appreciate the recent trend of Apple have the right, or even the duty, of expressing their view, without being "classified".
maybe Apple wants to exit the pro market all along. Apple will be focusing on the consumer market only, and pros will just have to move to PC.
I beg to differ with Anonymous regarding the death of Firewire in the consumer market.
The compression levels on consumer camcorders running flash cards and hard drives are absurd compared to MiniDV and they are worthless with high definition video (as another anonymous pointed out). Most of the Everyman types that are buying those crap camcorders at (insert big discount store chain here) are also usually buying $600 PCs at the same place. That's not Apple's consumer market for the Mac.
Even with flash memory, Firewire is still preferable for transferring non-linear video. The speed is vastly superior to USB 2.0's erratic burst rates.
I'm also not sure where Anonymous is buying Firewire cables. You can get a basic FW400 cable for under $5. Perhaps the port itself is vastly more expensive for manufacturers to include (although their appearance on cheap PCs seems to disprove this--I bought a dual firewire PCI card for my old PC for $20).
Perhaps the base consumer market is moving away from Firewire. But I ask you: since when has Apple's average consumer ever been the average consumer in the marketplace? Apple sets the standard and Mac users have always been ahead of the curve. Firewire is not a floppy drive. It's a superior technology to USB 2.0 and Apple could have easily kept it on the Macbook. When USB 3 comes around, perhaps Firewire will be dated.
For now, however, I'll quit whining when you haters donate enough money to my public school to replace our camcorders or buy Macbook Pros. It's tax deductible.
@Myself: your post has a good percentage of irony, but it touches a key in my mind.
Some years ago, still in the era of powerpc, Apple used to advertise/boast about the Xserve clusters (Virginia-Tech, just to name one) for high-octane scientific calculations. Maybe the ads of rock bands on Apple's home page have distracted me, but I don't see such an interest now in this area.
All those who are carrying on about how USB is good enough sound just like all those in the PC crowd who say PCs and Windows are good enough.
Since when has been using a Mac a matter of being just "good enough?"
As I've said elsewhere, I think Apple has forgotten their roots... what makes a Mac a Mac.
Well Canon said they are moving to flash memory consumer camcorders. Afaik they don't put FW on those camcorders.
Consumer camcorders were the only thing keeping FW alive. Now with that market gone, FW will die at least in the consumer market.
With the MB being a consumer laptop designed for millions, Apple aims to hit the sweetspot of that market. And the sweetspot definitely doesn't include those who absolutely need FW.
The public school guy can buy the $999 MBs next time he needs one. OR buy some refurb MBPs. Save your school some money.
Everyone is whining because you all are only looking at yourselves.
Makes adoptiong mac's into an enterprises much harder with the removal of a key features to may organisations
Anonymous says: "Everyone is whining because you all are only looking at yourselves."
Indeed. Perhaps we should poll a random sample of people on the street to see if they care. Why would the needs of loyal Macintosh users be relevant to the features offered on the most popular Apple Macintosh product?
This is not whining, it's productive product feedback from some of Apple's most active customers. A good part of Apple's success has been earned by listening to their customers rather than relying solely on their internal wisdom and random marketing research. Firewire may go the way of the dinosaurs, but I sincerely hope that Apple's relationship with its customers does not. As Greg mentioned earlier, I've given Apple my feedback and I encourage you to as well:
www.apple.com/feedback/